


Altruism

by MissAtomicBomb77



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2286582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAtomicBomb77/pseuds/MissAtomicBomb77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His altruism is why he lost her in the end.<br/>Which sounds contrary, yet at the same time, was the accurate description.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Altruism

Lee Lansing had come to Vietnam to replace the recalled Gloria Emerson on behalf of The Grey Lady, The New York Times. Lee had been freelancing for a while, mostly on the subjects they let women report on of the day, but Gloria had shown the New York news elite that women could be war correspondents as well; perhaps a little too well, hence Gloria’s return to the United States. 

She wanted the position badly. She wanted the chance to be there and not just depend on what she could find. Lee did what was expected of her, giving the soft news as needed while keeping her feet wet with the men that were already there. She interviewed colleagues, she researched, she prepared. She argued, pestered and persuaded and eventually was able to claim the assignment as her own.

Meaning, when Lee Lansing stepped off the plane, she didn’t lose her travel papers to the wind like a previous female correspondent. She wore sensible shoes unlike the slippers of another female correspondent upon her arrival. She did, however, bleach her hair even more blonde than it already was; no one was going to forget meeting her if she could help it. She had something to prove, even if it was only to maintain the path Emerson blazed before her.

It only took her twelve hours and a bad location choice for drinks to almost destroy that intention.

The Island of Misfit Journalists, the phrase she would coin over drinks years later. There was a dynamic of those that wanted to see the truth, those that had seen the truth and those that argued that there was, in fact, no truth. Saigon was a contradiction of culture that could rival New York on a good day; if there were good days to be had in Vietnam. There were three forces opposing one another, consisting of the he Americans, there were the Vietnamese and the foreigners in-between. 

Contempt from the foreigners, idolization from the Vietnamese and apathy from her countrymen is what greeted her in those first few hours. She had nowhere to be until the morning and she finds herself in a less than reputable place, but she knows the French language so she’s not completely dependent on the language skills of the locals. She can take care of herself and does so, but when she observes someone else that is unable to, she moves to intervene. Before she can, someone else does as well.

He looks a little too tall, a little too thin, a head full of hair and a beard that seems out of necessity than fashion, but he’s solid and disarms the wayward American from the Vietnamese woman that wanted none of the attention. As he walks past her on his way, he simply says that war does not forgive moral transgressions. She’s taken aback, because that seems contrary to, well, anything except the moment. The first person to catch her attention in the country is gone in a heartbeat, compounding the notion in her mind that Saigon was layers of contradictions.

Her lips hide a smile when they meet the next day, in a formal capacity and he clearly has no memory of her in the slightest. Charlie Skinner, he tells her, and shakes her hand, even though most of the men here passed on the formality. Their bureau chief had… cautioned her that Charlie was rather intense. That he drank his nights away to forget his days and that she would find that he was not the only one that did that. 

Lee could hold her own. She’d been exposed to alcohol entirely too young and smoking since she was fourteen (all in the causal and blue-blooded manor, of course). There were no vices in Vietnam, because when you could be dead tomorrow, what was the point in restraint the night before? After a few months of consistently proving her worth to him, to the news, falling into bed seemed like a natural next step for them both. One of those successes and adrenaline highs lead to a quick and sloppy kiss. This, after the moment of awkwardness passed, would lead to a night and morning of no words and pent up tensions.

Was it a relationship? She never really thought about it in those terms. Their bond was forged by fire, by war, by blood. Victories came in the written word, the well timed photograph, the race to be there first. The constant need to get the story, to expose the truth, to be first was the things that movtivated and that made them smile. 

They never talked about it, their relationship, which they probably should have, considering their trade was in communication after all, but their communication was always one-sided. They would toss their words to the winds and papers would print them. They told the stories; they were not a story. They were surrounded by the war and breaking news and that was always at the center of everything. Every one of their day was dictated by maps and leads, wire reports and sources. Walking the streets and avoiding explosions. Documenting what they witnessed for an audiance they did not know and only wanted to please.

It was amazing for her, coming from a world where she was expected to behave, and well, frankly, not act on her impulses. He never asked, she never told him that the fact that she was at his side defied conventions, outraged her father and broke her mother. The families Emerson, Kennedy, Lansing, Rockefeller, they could all be mentioned in the same breath and held in the same esteem. Her mother worried that even though she was Catholic as Rose Kennedy, she didn’t have children to spare. Which always bothered Lee to her hear mother say; it was as if Rose asked to have her children taken away from her. That woman granted her mother the only piece of sage advice that Lee could have wanted; there’s no fighting the future.

Her family is as distant to her as anything here. This surreal world they called Vietnam, which consisted of living and dying, of fear and the frightening and the fight versus the actual fighting. She didn’t know if she loved Charlie, honestly. It was a word with no weight in her lexicon. She could argue that she was fond of Charlie, but what was that, really? She might be even persuaded to say that she admired Charlie, which was easy to admit, hard to justify. Because even though they had masters that put them to task, he did what he wanted, when he wanted.

This made hitching to his wagon hard and until she understood one day that he had been on the other side of civilian. That he had carried a gun, that he had taken orders, and that he had lost brothers in arms. This explained his restlessness and did not, because he was as critical as Washington politician of the same military he was once a part of. All thoughts she kept to herself, because where they had a relationship, it wasn’t that kind of relationship, whatever the kind of relationship reporters that had sex was.

Not that it was demeaning in any way, nor was it passive. She had been with men before him, because after a certain age, there was not much more in the way of entertainment during house parties when parents separated to speak business and family. Their relationship was rooted in a trust she never had with anyone else. Because working together in such proximity, there was more than one occasion that their lives were in each other’s hands. People say that, but not many people lived it like they did. His bedroom voice and his working voice were not very different in her mind. Only the words he would say that would lead to the things that they would do. His voice would carry her though everything they did, even when she thought she was going to break. When she thought that she was going to break him. When she could physically take no more, he would be there, comfort, nurse, slave, placing her above himself.

So when they thought they had lost him, she thought she lost herself as well. Just because she never gave the word weight didn’t mean that it was not love.

His broken nose, his lopsided smile, clutching a lip arm against his body, he was lucky. He avoided enemy hands. Within a few days, he wanted to back to the way life was before. He told her that nothing happened; he didn’t want her to worry. He never told her of his nightmares, she needed not to concern herself. That there was no reason that he couldn’t handle things on his own. She could feel his lies in the pit of her stomach, each and every one.

The need to protect her above all else had started. That she didn’t need to risk herself; he could shoulder the risks on his own. He would suffer before she ever would. She deserved to be everything and anything she wanted to be. Charlie, well, he was fit for the beating and he’d take them. Before he realized it, he was taking them from her. Was protecting her the same as loving her? Maybe he thought it was, and to protect her, he built walls, he broke trust, he made decisions without her. The erosion was slow and when it became something not worth saving, she decided that she needed to leave him behind.

In that moment, she was surrounded by questions with no one to give her answers. What were they if he expended more energy to keep her from the work instead of doing the job? What were they without the reporting? Because what were they without trust?

He had no idea and she didn’t either that she would leave before Christmas. Lee didn’t make a conscious decision to do so, but she had become crippled. She was unable to do what she wanted to do with the person that she had learned to do it with. As much as he had given it to her, he just as well took it from her. She can’t bring herself to think it was out of malice, but it had happened none the less. She ironically notices that it has been roughly two years since she came to Vietnam and wonders idly if Gloria Emerson wasn’t recalled as much was shut down considerably, like herself.

It may be clear, but there will always be the ceiling and it’s the velocity that dictates what breaks, it or you.

So Lee Lansing leaves one Charlie Skinner behind to carve out her own life on her own terms.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not part of the greater series I have. Just a reponse to Two Sides.


End file.
